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Overdrive February 2019

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Overdrive
| February 2019
V O I C E S
Readers responded in large numbers
to news of the Commercial Vehicle
Safety Alliance's new policy intend-
ed to provide greater state-to-state
uniformity for officers as they interact
with the drivers of parked trucks.
at policy, introduced in Novem-
ber: Not to wake off-duty truckers
to conduct a random inspection.
Responses ranged from exasperated
positivity – "About time," said many
readers at Overdrive's Facebook
page – to "I hope they get the memo"
identifications of specific problem
jurisdictions.
One area that seemed to go un-
clarified in CVSA's new policy was an
issue that's been identified through
the years by team operators — officers
requiring sleeping off-duty drivers
in the bunk to be woken up for ID
checks and other issues when clearly
there's no need. Such an incident
precipitated what resulted in an ob-
struction case against trucker Kenny
Capell in 2015 in Georgia, though it
ultimately was thrown out.
Noted Timothy S. Earp, com-
menting at the Facebook page, "ere
needs to be something said about
waking a team driver as well. If you
are not going to out-of-service the
current driver, you have no business
talking to the one in the sleeper."
Asked for clarification, CVSA
Executive Director Collin Mooney
emphasized the policy is "to not wake
up any drivers. As far as a co-driv-
er needing to be woken up — it's
not something that we encourage,
because it defeats the purpose at that
point of the driver getting their rest.
With electronic logging devices, [in-
spectors] should have access to that
information without having to wake
up the driver anyway."
Mooney, to a degree, and some
readers expressed surprise that there
was even a need for the new policy.
"I've never had this happen, didn't
know this was even an issue," said Mi-
chael Bordeleau. Yet many others
felt otherwise.
"Tell that to Indiana working both
sides of the new truck parking lots
on I-80 east and west," wrote Scott
Bowman.
Matt Kallem: Southern Ohio, too.
Guy Palmer noted that "back in
the day, I was woken up a lot of times
A welcome policy:
Don't wake up drivers
Readers pointed to certain jurisdictions that
might need more than just a policy change to
carry out a directive to refrain from waking
off-duty drivers for a random inspection. "That
would be called 'common sense,' "commented
Buddy Wenners. "But we know some
inspectors don't always have that."
Max
Heine